Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture

Chapter 7. “Remember Sandia!”: Meno-Latinos and Religious Identity Politics

T chapter 7 U “Remember Sandia!” Meno-Latinos and Religious Identity Politics In spite of all of our clashing, here and there I have seen models of reconciliation. That’s why I keep going. —Emma LaRocque, Plains Cree métis and Mennonite, 1976 Latino Religion in the 1970s The mid-1970s were good years for Latino Mennonites. Overall membership numbers were on the rise and the new Concilio Nacional de Iglesias Menonitas Hispanas (National Council of Spanish Mennonite Churches) replaced the Minority Ministries Council (MMC) as the leading organization for Latino Mennonites.1 In the mid-1970s Latinos became the fastest growing segment of the Mennonite Church. Their numbers doubled in five years, from 500 members in 1970 to 1,061 by 1975, and by 1980 that number went over 1,500.2 From Idaho to New York to Texas, leaders were organizing Spanish-speaking churches. The era of white Mennonite missionaries had come to a close, as Latino leaders declared that “the Anglo pastor needs to decrease so that God may increase.”3 But even as Latino Mennonites grew in number and took on more visibility within the broader church, challenges remained. Most of the materials on Mennonite faith and theology were in English, the number of LatinosandLatinasonchurchboardsandotherinstitutionsremainedlow, T “remember sandia!” U 175 and the educational levels of Latino pastors were also quite low. Some pastors never made it past high school, some had little or no Bible training, and no pastor had studied at a Mennonite seminary.4 As Latino Mennonites addressed these challenges, they joined a broader movement of Latino evangelicals who in the 1970s were quickly changing the American religious landscape. When Latino and African American leaders grudgingly decided to disband the MMC in 1973, they did so with the hope that it might lead to better representation of minorities across all levels of the church. White Mennonite leaders believed it was time to fully integrate black and Latino Mennonitesanddoawaywiththespecterofracialidentitypoliticswithin the MMC. But at least initially, the move toward integration looked like it wasonlygoingtoproducefurtheralienationofLatinosandAfricanAmericans . For Latino Mennonites especially, the years after 1973 seemed to confirm suspicions that church membership had its benefits but full inclusion remained limited. But it was not all bad. As this chapter argues, Latino Mennonites spent the latter part of the 1970s staking out a political space in the church by drafting policy statements, planting more than 50 congregations, publishing Mennonite literature in Spanish, and organizing a Bible school with the specific aim of training Latino and Latina leaders for church leadership . They did so by playing up religious identity politics and asserting themselves as evangélicos, or as they called themselves, “Meno-Latinos.” The viability of religious identity politics came at a time in the 1970s when Mennonite leaders were calling for an end to talk of race in favor of a more palpable and integrated approach that moved beyond the politics of a “multiethnic brotherhood.” This chapter follows the recent trend among historians who are rethinking the role of radicalism and religion in the 1970s. For the most part, historians have identified the 1970s as the decade that gave rise to the conservative and politically astute Christian Coalition. According to historian Paul Harvey, the Christian Coalition “cobbled together religious folk from a variety of traditions . . . who shared a common faith in ‘family values’ and a political agenda of lower taxes, less government, school prayer, increased military spending, and opposition to abortion.”5 But the 1970s were defined by more than individual morality and the rise of the 176 T becoming evangélicos U religious right. As writer and activist Dan Berger argues, the 1970s represented a “deeply ambivalent and contentious moment” when multiple ideologies were taking root in American politics and religion.6 The decade of “disco discrimination” (to use the title of one of Hector Galan’s documentary films) became a point of critical reflection for Latino faith communities across the country. From the conjunto rhythms of Paulino Bernal to the Encuentros Pastorales among Latino Catholics, the 1970s were a defining decade for Latinos, who believed the church needed to better reflect their culture and values and took the lessons of the Chicano and Puerto Rican social movements and mobilized to transform their religious institutions.7 According to Presbyterian pastor and activist Jorge Lara-Braud, much of this had to do with the rise in Latino and Latina religious leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than in...